The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Our first friends to come and stay arrive in three weeks! Actors, surprise, surprise. One of them I nicknamed Chimney-Sweep many years ago. He’s from a place called Wakefield- and I don’t know why, but the accent sounds Victorian chimney-sweepish to me. When we first met I thought he was putting it on, but it turns out that’s how they actually speak. I believe my exact words were, “why are you doing this chimney sweep accent?”

The other visitor is in the production in the title, and it’s apparently worth watching in case you’re in the UK:

Fifteen-year-old Christopher has an extraordinary brain; he is exceptionally intelligent but ill-equipped to interpret everyday life. When he falls under suspicion for killing his neighbor’s dog, he sets out to identify the true culprit, which leads to an earth-shattering discovery and a journey that will change his life forever.

“Based on the international best-selling novel by Mark Haddon, the National Theatre’s acclaimed production of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is the winner of 5 Tony Awards® including ‘Best Play.’

Don’t miss this innovative drama that has been hailed by The Times as ‘a phenomenal combination of storytelling and spectacle.’

😛
No. I mean how the array of Scottish sounds, for example, mean the mouth has to work much harder.
One can speak RP with teeth practically clenched. Now try saying saying “Bloody Murder” with a Scottish accent. Your tongue had to roll two r’s and ignore vowels by turning murder in mrdr 😉

It’s a British thing 😀 Accents are invariably linked to education/class. At least they were, anyway.
People who were sent to public (which actually means private) schools, all sound the same. The grammar school people also speak clearly.
People with stronger accents tended to be from less affluent backgrounds 🙂

When, after my parents divorce, my Mum, sister & I moved to Nottingham (my Mum’s family lived there), Mum told me to try my best not to accquire a Nottingham accent. I went to a Girls Grammar school, & I found it hard to understand the accents, & was soon labelled ‘posh’ because I didn’t talk like the majority. It only made me more determined to stay different. Even now, I don’t have the local accent, to the amusement of my 7 year old Grandson, who often corrects my pronunciation of words like ‘up’ ‘butter’ etc. We have agreed to differ.

Isn’t it funny? I remember being a little boy and being screamed at to: Speak up & speak out. To pronounce letters clearly. To make sure I could be understood and heard by everyone. “Don’t mumble, boy!”
And that wasn’t it; remember calligraphy notebooks? When we get cards from ‘unnamed’ younger people, the handwriting looks like- well, it looks like they didn’t learn how to write with their hands. They use block letters. I’m not sure it’s real social progress for people to not speak clearly and not know how to write with their hands.
Surely there are better ways of achieving social equality than that.

Out of the various qualifications I’ve obtained, I’m most proud of my Royal School of Music Spoken English certificate (though it does say I tend to talk rather fast). My son & his friends all seem to talk in a mumble, running everything together, so I’m always asking them to speak clearly, yet they seem to understand each other. With the increased use of computers at school, I suspect in a few years, many kids won’t know how to write properly, which is sad. I had to use a fountain pen at school, & I still do most of the time. We didn’t have calligraphy notebooks though.

Really? We had calligraphy notebooks starting grade school. I don’t mean gothic writing, just cursive 🙂 Big letters, little letters, connecting letters.
Me being me, I immediately told my mother the school had asked for me to take in a set of Sheaffer fountain pens with various head sizes and two colours of ink. And there was a preference for the pen to be red or black 🙂

Wakefield. Capital of the West Riding before reorganisation of boundaries, when it became the administrative centre of WYCC. Home to county archaeology department, county archives dept (I worked at both), Police HQ, Crown Court, high security prison, a nice Georgian square
and some decent Victorian architecture. Also, Wakefield Girls High School, attended by Barbara Hepworth. One spoke properly if one went to the Girls’ High which felt like an encumbrance when speaking to ‘ordinary’ people.